


we can be heroes

by allforconniebonacieux



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator: Dark Fate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Day 1: Superhero/Supervillain, Drace Week 2020, F/F, Non-Binary Grace Harper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allforconniebonacieux/pseuds/allforconniebonacieux
Summary: Drace Week 2020Day 1: Superhero/Supervillain AUGrace Harper is a hero. They've worked hard to build their life, protecting the streets at night, fixing up cars during the day. It wasn't exactly glamorous work, either part, but it's their life and they love it. Especially when a mysterious new hero shows up one day, equally interested in Grace as they are in her.
Relationships: Grace Harper/Dani Ramos
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13
Collections: Drace Week 2020





	we can be heroes

**Author's Note:**

> heyo, fun fact, I spent so long trying to work on this one because my creative writing student ass is a *perfectionist* that this is like, at least another chapter long. When I finish it. Because writing fic instead of my dissertation is an acceptable use of my time and who needs to be prepared for lectures? Probably me, but that ain't the case this week.

Grace became a hero because of a woman. A very pretty woman, if she was being honest, the sort of beautiful that would make her ears go red and cause her ability to speak to cease. At the age of twenty seven the fact this still happened when Grace remembered the moment they had made brief eye contact was slightly embarrassing. In her defense though, it had been a very pretty woman.

She had been twelve years old. Sent out on an errand for her mom, she had spent too long staring at the teams playing a friendly five-a-side match on the public court, and was going to be way later than the thirty minutes the job should have taken. Checking the straps of her backpack held firm, she had started to run. Lying wouldn’t be an option; saying the line at the store had been long was a weak excuse, and Grace had never enjoyed lying. Hoping to avoid being grounded again, she had ducked into an alley that would cut out maybe a minute of her journey home. Lost in mentally mapping the route that would brush another minute off her return, she didn’t see the guys that were already there. A push to her chest fixed that, the hand shooting out in front of her.

She yelped, the force stopping her movement. A second hit pushed her backwards, and she took a step to avoid overbalancing with the backpack. She was stopped that way too, a looming presence right behind, his breath somewhere just above her right ear. She was tall for her age and still growing. But still just a kid. The hand in front of her was joined by the rest of the man, a guy best described as just grubby. His hair greasy and matted, a face that was unclean yet somehow clean shaven, teeth yellowed and crooked. 

‘Hey kid, what’s in the bag?’

She didn’t feel the need to tell him it was just the ingredients for dinner; some veggies, three cans (one of mixed beans, two of tomatoes) and a gallon of milk because Grace had finished the last of it when she came home from school and there wasn’t any left for her brother to have with his cereal the next day, and she wasn’t allowed to complain about it being heavy, if she had only had one glass instead of half the bottle (‘Half a gallon, Gracie, how do you manage to drink half a gallon of milk?’), then she wouldn’t need to buy a new one.

The guy didn’t actually want to know any of that, Grace knew. He just wanted cash. Unfortunately for him, the only change she had received was fourteen cents. Her mom was smart enough to not give her anymore than she knew the groceries would cost, no matter how trustworthy Grace was. Sure she was more likely to buy a candybar for her brother than keep the cash herself, but even as selfless as that was, the less money she had, the less likely it was this exact situation would happen. And yet.

‘Nothing.’

‘Sure don’t look like nothing, kid. Bag looks pretty full if you ask me.’ Grubby Face leered, leaning forward, his gross breath warming her face. Nose wrinkling, Grace tried to lean away, only to remember the guy behind, who chuckled. There were two more guys, both leaning against the wall where Grubby Face had stepped from. They were just watching. One of them had a knife, flicking it round his hand without looking at it, watching her.

‘I didn’t though.’ Grace couldn’t help the quip, scared as she was. She’d learned about the fight or flight response in a biology lesson. She always felt like the fight response was her go-to. It was why she had got detention for punching creepy Mike Peters at recess when he’d tried to take her lunch money. He had pushed her when she said no. Then he had gone flying and hit the trash cans six feet behind him. Her parents had been called to a special meeting. She had been left sitting in the hallway outside, but she’d heard enough of the hushed discussion through the door to glean it was something about a zero-tolerance policy, no exemptions. Once her detentions were done she was moved to a different lunch slot than Mike, and the teachers kept a much closer eye on her, particularly in PE. Whenever the class played dodgeball she was also held back at her previous class so she missed team picks, then made to run laps or help Coach keep score, ‘to keep the teams fair’. 

Her smart mouth was clearly just as bad as her left hook, if the way Grubby Face tilted his head back was an indication.

‘What was that?’

‘I didn’t ask. What you think of my backpack. I didn’t ask.’ In for a penny, in for a pound. Nothing wrong with being honest.

Grubby Face tilted his head again, to the side. Stared at her for a few seconds. Then laughed. The others stayed quiet. The breath of the one behind her was tickling her ear but she refrained from wiping at it. 

‘I like you kid. You’re funny. Tell you what. Give us the backpack, we let you go.’ He smiled, grinning wide like the sharks from Finding Nemo. It was creepy.

She knew it was stupid, but she didn’t want to give them the backpack. It had their dinner in it. Her mom had paid for this food. She didn’t want to give it to them. 

She opened her mouth, starting to form the word that would pretty obviously bring the guy with the knife over, when someone else said it, louder. The voice came from behind her somewhere, closer to the alleyways entrance. It was a woman's voice. A pretty voice too, that little part of her brain that never took in a word of her English teacher’s lectures noted. 

‘No.’

Everyone looked over to the source of the voice, Grace included. 

It was a woman. 

A very pretty woman, at that.

Very pretty in the way that made Grace think she would have to try very hard to pay attention if she was her English teacher. She could be mistaken for a teacher, with her clothes, a young, fresh out of teacher training school look. A blouse and jeans, not tight, but fitted. Grace felt a rush of heat to her face as she took in exactly how well the jeans were fitted. She slowly turned her head back to Grubby Face. Maybe this should be the priority. The two at the side were now in her periphery, both still looking at the lady.

Grace silently hoped she hadn’t heard her mouthing off to the muggers. Fortunately it seemed she hadn’t, as the mysterious lady carried on talking.

‘Let them go.’

It took Grace a second to realise the ‘them’ in question was probably her. It wasn’t the first time someone had been unsure, especially given the lady could only see Grace’s back. It actually didn’t feel that weird to be called ‘them’. Better than the usual ‘he’, when people saw her tall figure and cropped hair. The idea of it was actually quite interesting.This would probably be a topic to revisit when she wasn’t in the middle of being mugged. Speaking of;

‘Stay out of this lady,’ Grubby Face warned. ‘Just move on with your day. This doesn't concern you.’

‘I think you and your friends should go.’ 

Footsteps behind Grace, getting closer, and the gang tensed up. The guy behind Grace put a hand on the strap of her backpack, stopping her from moving suddenly. Grubby Face walked forward, giving Grace a side-eye of warning as he passed.

‘Or, we let the kid go, and you join me and my buddies here for some fun, eh? Sound like a better plan, sweetheart?’

‘No. It doesn’t.’

Grace didn’t quite know what happened, but suddenly the hand on her backpack was gone. A yelp behind her. Grubby Face started forward, then took a step back.

‘What the fuck.’

The two guys started forward, Knife Guy bringing the blade forward, a warning and a protective measure in one. She didn’t see enough to guess what their next move would be before she was being swung around by the backpack, her feet scraping the concrete sidewalk beneath her as she tried to keep from falling over. As it turned out, Guy Behind also had a knife, a fact she learned when the cold metal pressed against her neck. It was quite terrifying. Her neck stung where the blade was held.

She locked eyes with the lady. That one moment would stick with her for the rest of her life, the moment of concerned brown eyes focused solely on her, asking silent questions of whether she was okay, was she hurt, would she marry her. 

That last one might just have been the pubescent hormones and her burgeoning understanding of what exactly her sexuality might be, projected from Grace’s perspective onto this stranger, but there was no shame in teenage fantasies. She’d learned that in Health class.

The pretty lady seemed to get her answers, scanned over Grace’s face and body for a split second, eyeing her over for any signs of injury, before flicking to the men behind Grace.

‘Kid, I think you should run.’

‘Uhh.’

Before Grace could point out that she couldn’t, the lady moved. Even years down the line she could never quite figure out what the lady did exactly, but quicker than seemed natural, she had moved almost past Grace, the hand holding the knife at her throat was being pushed away and then pulled up and just behind Grace’s ear there was the dull sound of a fist hitting a face. The guy even sounded like Mike Peters had, the same surprised yelp of a man not expecting a woman to fight back. It sounded very satisfying. Grace wondered if the lady had the same small stab of pride as she had when Mike had crashed into the trash cans. 

With the man holding her incapactiated, Grace followed the urge to turn around and see what was going, catching a glimpse of him lying on the ground clutching his face, while the mystery woman moved forward, a whirl of movement from her knees and elbows. It was very eye-catching. Very memorable. Grace would be able to attest to that for many years to come.

However, Grace standing still had in fact caught the eye of her saviour, and her concentration was divided from the three men still standing. 

‘Run, kid. Off you go.’ 

Grace stared for another moment as the woman went back to the fight, almost dancing around the men as she made to disarm Knife-Guy, before taking her advice and sprinting back down the alley to the bustle of the street. 

She was gonna be so late.

Mom was going to kill her.

As it turned out, once she explained through ragged breaths that she nearly got mugged, her mom didn’t care so much that Grace was late. She did, however, care about what exactly Grace did to stop it from being an actual mugging.

‘Nothing, Mom, I swear. I was there, and the guys were going to take my backpack, but then this lady showed up and told them to stop, and they pulled a knife- I’m fine, Mom, I swear- and then the lady was so cool! She just like, pulled the knife away from me- no, Mom, I’m fine, look, it didn’t cut me- and she pulled the knife away, and she punched the guy, and then she was just like phwar! Hyah! And just kicking them and beating them up, it was so cool! And then she told me to run, and I did, and now I’m here, Mom, I’m okay, I promise, look, no cuts!’

Her mother looked at her, a worry in her eyes that Grace wouldn’t understand for another few years, before checking over her again, tilting her chin to check her neck. She frowned and got a cloth from the sink.

It came back red. 

Grace would check her neck that night when she went to brush her teeth, poking at the pale flesh in the yellow hued light of the bathroom. She couldn’t find any sign of torn flesh or raised skin. Smooth as a baby’s butt. Or a baby’s neck. She hadn’t really been paying attention to the lesson on similes. 

Escaping somehow without a physical mark, Grace couldn’t shake that something pretty major had happened. Other than the fact that she was incredibly lucky to get away unscathed, and holy shit would it hit her later how lucky she was, she couldn’t forget the mysterious woman that saved her.

Her mom asked around, and Grace kept an eye out, but no one in their neighbourhood had seen a woman matching the description before. Admittedly, ‘a very pretty brunette lady that kicks butt’ wasn’t much to go off. She was gone. The would-be muggers were found. Well, actually they all turned themselves in for their various misdemeanours, attempted mugging, and admitted to copious amounts of stolen goods being in their homes. They refused to talk about the lady who beat them up. Didn’t give a description, wouldn’t specify how she got them to go to the police. Just confessed there had been a lady who whooped their asses and made them see the error of their ways. They all got various amounts of jail time Grace would later find. So that was a somewhat reassuring conclusion to that whole thing.

Grace could never shake the memory of it all though. The way the woman moved so effortlessly, fighting them so viciously but not actually injuring them. She asked her parents to sign her up for self defense classes and was met with a worried silent conversation taking place through their eyes. Her dad had sighed and sat her down.

‘Alright kiddo, we need to have a talk.’

It turned out most kids couldn’t punch another kid six feet back with one blow for the very simple reason that most kids didn’t have a power. An ‘enhanced ability’ as her mom said they should call it. The lack of mark from the knife held to her throat also suggested an enhanced healing factor, that in hindsight explained her amazing lack of skinned knees despite a rambunctious childhood. 

They told her they would support her no matter what. But enhanced people tended to find trouble, one way or another, recognising opportunities to use their abilities for the benefit of themselves or the public. The masked criminals that she saw on TV every other week, the vigilantes that kids on the playground would trade comic books of; they were the people like Grace who couldn’t resist the pull of using their abilities publicly. There were people with the supposed powers who were leading ordinary lives, and they hoped that would be the path she took, but it wasn’t fair to not let her know the options she had available. 

Sat in the living, her mom and dad on either side, holding her close, Grace weighed the possibilities of the paths they laid out.

A week later she was signed up for a self defense class.

It ran Tuesday and Thursday nights in what was otherwise a boxing gym. Her dad always paid the man running it in cash. Three months after joining, with several hundred dollars of broken equipment quietly paid for, she was moved to a more focused class. It wasn’t a teenage class, here she mixed with adults, but her ability to knock over men twice her size never raised an eyebrow. As Grace spent more time in the classes, and learnt more about technique, she was able to glean more knowledge of others with enhancements. Mostly through observation, but some casual conversation, other regulars honed her knowledge of strategy, of knowing your enemy, of knowing when to pick your battles. Of how for every caped crusader taking down an alien with a vengeance against the mayor, there were probably about thirty everyday, run-of-the-mill vigilantes looking out for the everyday folk caught in the crossfire. They weren’t lauded in the press, they didn’t get a key to the city. But they protected the people when so many others wouldn’t. 

By their sixteenth birthday Grace had figured out a bit more about themself. They knew the best way they could use their powers, and by a strange chance found the opportunity to prove it. Walking home from a class, a dark, mid-winter five PM night that encouraged people to keep moving and keep out of the cold, they heard a scream from an alley. They ran in, taking note of the screaming woman struggling to push back an encroaching man. Grace looked, saw a piece of wood from a broken crate, hefted it up and smacked it round the guys head. He crumpled to the ground. Grace picked up the woman's dropped purse, handed it back with a smile. The woman stared, wide-eyed, clutching her purse to her chest. 

‘Are you okay, ma’am?’

A nod. 

‘Are you okay to get home?’

The start of a nod, which then turned into a shake. 

‘Would you like me to walk you home? Or at least back to the street for a cab?’

Another nod.

‘Was that a yes, walk you home, or yes, call a cab?’

The woman nodded again. Grace held back a sigh, the buzz of adrenaline still coursing through, and held out an arm. 

‘I’ll walk you to the street and you can decide when we’re there.’

The woman took it, and started to walk with Grace, leaning on them for some support. She stopped for a moment to kick the prone man, before nodding to herself and carrying on, leading Grace away from the scene. Grace looked back to the man and made note of the location. They would call an ambulance for him. Just in case.

And that was that.

Grace had caught the bug for helping people.

They were a superhero.

Well, a vigilante. Had to start somewhere.

Over the next few years Grace finished high school, started an apprenticeship scheme with a mechanical firm and moonlighted as a vigilante most evenings. Tuesdays and Thursdays, they had a class to teach.

That was how they found themselves, aged twenty five, a common feature in the local news as the masked entity ‘The Augment’. They weren’t a fan of the name, couldn’t actually recall how it had come about, but one clear-ish picture of them in the paper, a rookie shot of them absently watching a cut heal, and that was enough to tie them to the name forever.

The costume had come in dribs and drabs, a balaclava from their dad the day after that first rescue, a set of climbing gloves from a buddy at the training gym. On their eighteenth birthday someone slipped an address into their locker, and they soon found themselves the acquaintance of a grouchy old seamstress named Sarah. Sarah didn’t take shit, which Grace appreciated, even if Sarah’s penchant for stabbing Grace with pins seemed borderline gleeful. Sarah had been paid in advance for that first suit, and didn’t charge extortionate prices for costume fixes, replacement masks or emergency first aid. She did, however, offer unsolicited opinions on Grace’s fighting style. Grace would snark back and shoot off a crack about the older woman needing glasses. Annoyingly though, every piece of advice proved golden, Grace’s form becoming more precise, the technique smoother when they tried it out, mid-fight or in the quiet of the gym. Sarah, credit to her, never said a word when Grace offered mumbled thanks for the reminder to not lock their knees. 

Perched atop an apartment building in the centre of the city, Grace watched the people living their lives below. It was kind of their home base for quiet nights like these. Years of slowly building connections meant a good network of people who could get in touch if they thought The Augment was more suited to handle it. Likewise, Grace wasn’t going to face someone who seemed to be made of a Jell-O like substance, where a hit of strength might just kill them straight off, and would call in a fellow street-watcher who could keep them calm with telepathy while they waited for a big name hero to contain them. Once was odd, but the fact Grace had been through that enough times to know accidentally punching a Jell-O guy too hard would maybe kill them, if not make containment far more tedious than it needed to be, well. Grace did learn best from trial and error, and it was little comfort when a caped crusader tried to offer the weak platitude, ‘The person they were was dead long before you got involved’. Didn’t make it any easier. 

But Grace had seen enough in eight years of crime-fighting to know that sometimes people died. It sucked. Sometimes you were to blame. That sucked even more. But you had to take a moment, pull yourself together and keep going so tomorrow that one person wasn’t ten more dead. Fifty more dead. A hundred. Thousands. That was the job they did. Vigilantes, caped crusaders. Heroes. 

They were pretty proud to be able to put themself into that group. They were a hero.


End file.
